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Is that down to the pupil ?

Sounds like another MacOS "why not use random unicode characters that look similar to the one you really want" feature to me.

Perhaps copying from another source, creating a wacky encoding error?

I was confused when I read this because reader mode on Safari converted the umlauts and acutes into quotation marks and apostrophes.

or the text went through latex at some point, which can easily lead to a"->ä.

letter+quotation mark is a common way to write umlauts...